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2015-11-21

Harry Dean Stanton : Character Actor

Note : this review is a
contribution to What
A Character! blogathon hosted by Once
Upon A Screen, Outspoken & Freckled and Paula’s Cinema
Club.

Harry Dean Stanton :
Character Actor

Harry Dean Stanton

When my ever
lasting sickness of cinephilia infected me fifteen years ago, I was discovering
many pans of cinema and many subtleties passed by me. One of my early
discoveries was the 1986 Wim Wenders film Paris,
Texas. Staring Harry Dean Stanton
as an almost mute presence of a lone man walking and wandering around in life
since his divorce with his wife (Natassja
Kinski). Back then, I knew Kinski as the daughter of the famous Klaus but
Stanton was a familiar face from David
Lynch films but not much. Needless, to say that Wenders’ film left a great
impression on me and Stanton forged a fascination for introspective characters
and loners in cinema. Read here my obsession with Taxi Driver. Stanton’s performance still haunts me to this day and
it is something at first that I couldn’t grasp that hooked me. Needless to say,
but Wenders’ film is a masterpiece even if it’s a little early to put this
crowning label, it generally takes thirty years to actually rank a movie as a
masterpiece, I entirely assume my saying of this praise.

With this little introduction in my first real encounter or actual
acknowledgement of the screen presence of Harry Dean Stanton, let’s have an
overview of his career and his contribution to films.

Wenders'Paris, Texas

Debuts

Active on
screen since 1954, his first uncredited appearance was in the Alfred Hitchcock film staring Henry Fonda; The Wrong Man. Then he was on a row of television roles and minor
film secondary characters like in How the
West Was Won in 1962 to the Award winning Cool Hand Luke. He is also part of a favorite one mine : In the Heat of the Night by Norman Jewison. He also worked with
infamous director Sam Peckinpah on Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, for Francis Ford Coppola on The Godfather Part II, on the sci-fi
horror masterpiece Alien from Ridley Scott, and another great
director on his resume is John Carpenter
for his Escape From New York and Christine.

1984

But it was in
1984 that he was billed as a repo man in the Alex Cox cult classic Repo
Man and in the aforementioned Wenders masterpiece Paris, Texas. Those two roles are the most opposed performances by
Stanton as the repo man is over the top acting while his subtle mute presence
in Paris, Texas is an example of
restraint and mastery.

David Lynch

In 1990,
became his collaboration with the master that is David Lynch on the film Wild at Heart. They will work together again
on Twin Peaks : Fire Walk With Me,The Straight Story, and Inland Empire. Stanton has been a
perfect fit for Lynch’s eerie films set in a dreamlike reality and reclusive
world. Especially, in the last and what seems to be the final film by the
director, Stanton seems like a presence that is directly linked with Lynch’s
vision and seems to be the architect behind the twisted plot that Inland Empire carries. Stanton brings a
mysterious recluse character to life while being there is already a promess of
classic Lynch.

Lately

Now at 89
years old, Harry Dean Stanton still has done a few cameos in The Avengers and Seven Psychopaths. He also was the subject of a documentary titled Harry Dean Stanton : Partly Fiction
in 2012.

With more
than 250 films in his career and many TV episodes it is needless for me to say
that I only have grasped a small part of his work and long career. Many actors
would sell father and mother just to have worked with a few of the directors he
can claim on his resume. From Hitchcock to Lynch, to Francis Ford Coppola, to
Wenders, to Scorsese, to Carpenter, to Gilliam, to Cox, to Rosenberg, to Ridley
Scott, to Jewison, and many more. It not just seem that when Harry Dean Stanton
is in the credits of a production you will be in for a noticeable film. This is
what a great character actor does, it supports the leading cast and elevate the
game to bring it to a superior level.